While we all ‘holiday at home’ this April, why not try baking your own hot cross buns?
Continue readingAuthor: The Curator
Of dining rooms and doilies!
This week at Elizabeth Farm we thanked our dedicated Soft Furnishings Group for all their efforts: creating curtains, bed-hangings and covers, table cloths, covers and runners – and so many doilies for the dining room!
Continue readingAnother year gone!
Well that’s it for 2019!
Continue readingA box of Christmas mangoes
This week we welcome guest author Dr. Madeline Shanahan to the blog. A historian and archaeologist, Madeline was a guest speaker at this year’s Spring Harvest festival at Elizabeth Farm, where she talked with Jacqui about spices. Earlier this year her new book – Christmas Food and Feasting – was published, looking at how the concept of the ‘Christmas dinner’ evolved, both in Britain and throughout the English-speaking world. So pull up a crate of mangoes and carve up the pudding as we dive in! [Eccentric images supplied by yours truly]
Continue reading(Get ready to) Deck the halls!
Its that time of year again – unpack the decorations, break out the pudding bowls and clear the kitchen table because its time to get those cakes and puddings ready!
Continue readingSeething!
When you read 19th century cookbooks the terminology can be unfamiliar. Take this definition of stewing: “the act or operation of seething, or boiling slowly.” [1] Boiling sure, but ‘seething’?
Continue readingUnder pressure
Eagle-eyed reader Ariela asked about an usual item listed in the ‘third drawer down’ – Slacks patent digester! So chop up your turnips and gather those leftover bones – this week we’re in for for some thrifty high pressure cooking.
Continue readingThe third drawer down
While we’re mainly looking at the pots and pans in this series on the colonial batterie de cuisine, it’s a good time for a diversion into all the miscellaneous bits and pieces in a kitchen – all those things we keep in the ‘third drawer down’.
Continue readingUnder the hammer
One of the best documentary sources for kitchens and dining rooms in the colonial period isn’t actually family archives – but newspaper and auction advertisements. Individuals leaving the colony after a few years – or facing ‘pecuniary embarrassment’ – would typically sell up, so lists of household effects are fairly common. Larger sales warranted their own catalogues, which could be broken down room by room; for a curator these are a goldmine of information as to furnishings and paraphernalia, artworks and even what books were in personal libraries.
Continue readingPolly put the kettle on, and let’s have… fish?
Last year we talked about those confusing and interchangeable words baking and roasting, and got to grip with table- and soup spoons. They’re far from the only confusing words used in the historic kitchen and household, so today I’m starting a series of posts looking at the vast range of pots and pans you can see in a historic kitchen – and what exactly they were called and used for. Continue reading